Milliways Again

[her_imperial_radiance]

It lurks. Oh how it lurks.

Comments

[her_imperial_radiance]

Orfeo grins. Elena groans and mutters under her breath.

[prima_sequentem]

She grins back.

"In the meantime, why don't you tell me about yourself?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I'm youngest of four," says Orfeo agreeably. "Born during the Volturi control of the wolf population, in the Volterra village; our dad's a wolf and my and Elena's mom is his imprint. So I'm half-Quileute half-Italian. We stayed there even after Her Majesty took over but when I activated me and Elena joined the Imperial pack to have more stuff to do. I run the village paintball games - it's not a big deal, Chiara can take over - and I have field medic training but it's only applicable for wolves and you shouldn't set me at a hurt human, and I can speak Italian natively, and I won yellow gold in the Ultra Olympics for wolf division wrestling once, and white gold in mixed middle division long-distance swimming twice. I'm on the holiday decoration committee. I make really good risotto. I'm decent at chess and great at knowing which way is north and lousy at singing."

[prima_sequentem]

"I don't speak Italian," Libby says thoughtfully. "I should learn it."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I mostly just use it to talk to Mom," says Orfeo.

[prima_sequentem]

"It's nice sharing multiple languages with somebody, though. Me and my aunt speak English, German, and French."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I know... maybe a few hundred words of French, and I could probably fake more than that if I had to," muses Orfeo. "There's a stationary branch of the Imperial coven in Québec so I hear it in my head and we go there sometimes, but I've never systematically tried to learn it. I don't know a lick of German. Except, like, 'ja' and 'heil' and 'schadenfreude'."

[prima_sequentem]

Libby giggles. "Not a bad start. You can learn them with magic when I take you home," she offers. "Although I'm not sure it wouldn't be more fun teaching you the long way."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"It sounds like you do a lot of stuff with magic," he observes.

[prima_sequentem]

"I didn't use to. Then Bella happened," she says, smiling. "And now there's a palace on the moon, a rapidly expanding city on Mars, and little things like installing a whole language in somebody's head are starting to look comparatively trivial."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Huh. What do you do while she's doing all that?"

[prima_sequentem]

"My specialty is personnel," she explains. "When I said I had a lot of friends, I may or may not have meant I run an extensive international organization full of useful people of all varieties. Not unlike your empire, from what I can tell. Whenever Bella needs someone to run the Mars immigration office or her magic bank or something, I find the right person for the job."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Cool. That doesn't sound like something you'd just fall into, how'd you get into this?"

[prima_sequentem]

She looks nostalgic for a moment.

"It's a long story. I'll tell you later," she says. "Oh, and I'm a mathematician, too."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"What kind of math?" he says, with the air of someone who just about knows that there are kinds.

[prima_sequentem]

"Lots of kinds. I'll spare you the boring incomprehensible details." She grins. "Unless you like boring incomprehensible details, in which case I can tell you all about infinite-dimensional vector spaces."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Well, I wouldn't listen to anyone else talk about infinite-dimensional vector spaces, but," he shrugs.

[prima_sequentem]

"I'm sure between the two of us we can come up with a subject that you like on its own merits. How about motorcycles, do you like motorcycles? I have a motorcycle."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I like motorcycles," he agrees. "Can't have one because we move around the world all the time, but I learned to ride one anyway; there's some stashed in some of the imperial garages."

[prima_sequentem]

"I'll get you a motorcycle," Libby decides.

[her_imperial_radiance]

He beams at her.

Elena makes a noise in the back of her throat and sweeps out of the blue guest house.

[prima_sequentem]

Libby also decides that nothing terrible will happen if she sits beside Orfeo. So she does.

[her_imperial_radiance]

He goes right on grinning.

[self_composed]

Bella runs out of things to look at in the kitchen. She sidles back in. "So what's the deal?" she asks.

[prima_sequentem]

"If we can manage it, Orfeo is going to move worlds," says Libby. "I intend to manage it. Would you be willing to spare a star to see if it'll fix the unpleasantness of being a wolf with no pack? I'll start in smaller denominations, obviously, but I'm not sure a hex would be enough."